NASH

Welcome to the National Audit of Seizure
Management in Hospitals homepage

National Audit of Seizure Management in Hospitals

Background

Epilepsy is a very worrying condition for patients and the
public, but with good care, it can be better controlled and
risks minimised. Many seizures presentations to Emergency
Departments (EDs) could be prevented. NASH (the National Audit
of Seizure management in Hospitals) examines the facilities and
care available to such patients in order that it will identify
how best to change services to reduce the numbers presenting at
hospital.

Two rounds of NASH have previously taken place. The first round
took place in 2011 with 127 hospitals entering 3755 cases onto
the database. NASH2 took place in 2013, with 4,544 cases entered
from 154 hospitals. St Elsewhere reports from real (but
anonymised) hospital are available to download for both NASH1
and NASH2 from the "Newsletter and reports" section of our
website. The NASH audits have focused upon cases presenting to
EDs in the UK with a seizure.

Despite being the most common serious neurological condition
(with around 600,000 people in the UK having the diagnosis),
epilepsy is not high on the commissioning agenda – and indeed is
often ignored behind the higher profiles of heart disease, COPD,
diabetes and stroke. By collecting representative data from
across the UK, NASH has raised the profile of epilepsy by
providing comparative data that will encourage clinicians within
Trusts and commissioners within PCTs (or their successors) to
include it actively when planning services.

NASH is based on the successful methods used for many of the
other national audits, and has been developed with input from
emergency physicians, epilepsy specialists and patient groups.

NASH 3

We were recently awarded funding from UCB pharma that will
enable us to run NASH3 to once again focus on cases presenting
to EDs with seizure. It is hoped that in this audit round we
will also be able to enable recommendations to be made for best
practice and to raise the profile of seizure management at
CCG/STP and national levels.

We will soon be contacting hospitals across the UK to see if
they will be interested in participating in the audit. Copies of
the NASH 3 introductory letter, protocol, audit proforma and the
data entry instructions can be found the NASH3 proforma section
of this website.

If you wish to get in touch with the NASH team, click the
'Contact us' link at the left hand side of the page to email the
study office.